'Massive' rocket attack launched on Israel

The Damsel in Distress has impeccable timing. Precisely when they don't get what they want from the US elections, Israel hauls off and whacks six Palestinians, drawing a 'massive' rocket attack in retaliation that causes no damage or injuries, but which generates some useful headlines in the world press. - Ed.

Hamas militants in the Gaza Strip fired more than 35 rockets towards Israel today, the army and the Islamist group said, hours after the Israeli army killed six militants in the coastal territory.

An Israeli police spokesman said the rockets landed in southern Israel, causing no damage or injuries.

Hamas claimed responsibility for the attacks, the first such announcement by the Islamist group since an Egyptian-brokered ceasefire with Israel went into effect on June 19.

Palestinian officials said they had been informed by Israel that all commercial border crossings with the Gaza Strip would remain closed on Wednesday in response to the rocket attacks.

Israeli airstrikes killed five militants and Israeli soldiers shot dead a gunman during an incursion into the Gaza Strip on Tuesday.

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India seeks 'velvet divorce' from Iran

Something's going on behind the curtains here. - Ed.

Amid the rubble of the Middle East policy of the George W Bush-Ehud Olmert duo, there has been a true success story. The United States and Israel have largely succeeded in snatching India from the "other" side of the Middle Eastern geopolitical divide. This became evident more than once in the past week.

On October 26, US forces based in Iraq attacked the Syrian border village of Sukkaryiah. The attack triggered outrage regionally. Even the Arab League, which has an ambivalent attitude toward Damascus, felt compelled to condemn Washington. But Delhi looked away. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, who paid a five-day visit to India in June - the first visit by a Syrian head of state in more than three decades - must be bemused why Delhi didn't say at least what was so patently obvious, namely, it is wrong to violate the territorial integrity of a sovereign country.

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Election Day Reflux

By www

John McCain has conceded the Presidency to Barak Obama, and praised the equality of the US which made Mr Obama's victory possible.

Let me tell you that as I would not ever have wanted John McCain to win, and if I had been eligible to vote I would have voted for Obama – since the electoral system in the US would have third party candidates end up carrying either a sense of disenfranchisement as the one they wanted cannot be allowed to win and/or guilt for allowing the one they wanted the least come to office.

Therefore, it is not out of remorse or because I am a bad looser that I am now writing that Barak Obama's victory is the beginning of a great struggle – but unlike the last 8 years, this time we will be struggling for something and not against. This time around all of us who want US to join the world, and not just act as if it never really were there in any significant way, have the ability to apply the pressure to ensure that the presidency is a representative position and not one of the rule of one or even a few individuals.

Not one single person in the US government – not the house, the senate or the presidency – is elected as a person.

They are all elected as representatives and as such must be told and mandated every single day of their service what we want of them to do in our name.

So as many of us feel that our vote was counted, that we had our will, as many should feel the sense of responsibility that comes from realizing that we own whatever comes next.

Americans tend to relax after Election Day, and the system has encouraged them to assume a passive posture while allowing those who represent not the majority but the profit and greed of the few gather in lobbying groups, accumulate and apply the pressure of wealth to those who are to serve the majority of Americans only.

It has seemed that Americans have not realized that while election is one day, representation is daily.

If we fail to act upon that, this election should be considered stolen as much as any preceding one – with the difference that the US people will be complicit in the crime.


--
Global Patriot - Human first of all....

"The thoughts and deeds of those who think they are superior to others and consider others as second-class and inferior; who intend to remain out of the divine circle, to be the absolute slaves of their materialistic and selfish desires, who intend to expand their aggressive and domineering natures, constitute the roots of today's problems in human societies."

George Carlin - On Voting

Election 2008

By www

There was once a shining fruit hanging in a tree
Perfect, round and juicy - that was obvious to see
Everyone who saw it said to others: 'That one is sweet,the
sweetest fruit on any tree on this or any street'
They'd say: 'That one has flavor of wonderful delight'
And yet nobody had ever even tried to take a bite.

The people who owned the tree, of course, was proud as one can be
They gloated even though it was not them folks came to see
Even though their fruit was solely a result of efforts past
of previous owners of the tree who had cared to see them last.

But then one day to all surprise the fruit fell to the ground
and split right down the middle as people gathered 'round
And everyone could finally see what the fruit had hide
A thousand worms and spiders had eaten it inside.

While spectators had never dared to take a real close look
and the owners of the tree the fruit's delight for granted took
Critters had indulged in that which no one else dared taste
and now their deed was done and the fruit forever waste.

The world might see the USA as a structurual democracy
but it is eaten away from the inside because noone that dares see
and have the power ever takes responsibility.

Like the owners who took pride in that for which they never toiled
the people of the USA will find their gifts' been spoiled
The structure they were tapped to care for by those who'd gone before
will be hollowed out by worms and spiders eating at its' core.

First votes in as Dixville Notch, NH picks Obama

Dixville Notch, NH (AHN) - The town of Dixville Notch, New Hampshire, with a population of around 75 people and only 21 registered voters, has picked Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) to be the next president of the United States. Obama defeated Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) by a margin of 15 votes to 6.

Dixville Notch, which opens its polls for voting at midnight Eastern time on Monday evening, has been the first town to tally its ballots in the country for decades.

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Only a landslide is theft-proof

I'm with George here. It's the stealing--all the time with the constant stealing. I'm very sick of it. They started by stealing the 2000 election, and they've been going hog-wild stealing ever since. If Obama turns out to be another God-awful tool of the Illuminati, so be it. I can handle that knowing that he at least got in without stealing the votes. - Ed.

If you want Obama to win, you can't take victory for granted.

Even though the polls project that he'll win by a landslide, a lot of racists who say they'll vote for Obama will vote for McCain when they are alone in the voting booth. As former NBA Charles Barkley said:

I think the polls are absolutely useless. I do. Seriously. Most people who are racist, they are not going to answer that question correctly either on the phone call or on camera, so I 100 percent believe the polls are flat out useless. I think this race is going to be neck and neck down to the wire.

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Fire in the basement

from November 3:

Anyone refusing to follow politics would have missed a subtle event with enormous implications: a presidential candidate said his opponent was "a decent man", and the crowd booed. This is the nation-scale equivalent of finding a fire in your basement. The core of one of our major parties is turning into a lynch mob that can no longer be held in check by its leaders, and one of those leaders is actively encouraging it. Here's a smart but long-winded article about it, McCain-Palin and the Lucifer Effect.

We're very lucky that Obama came along to build a coalition of many races, classes, and political perspectives, to hold us in a calm and positive emotional space, and to organize us well enough to possibly defeat an alliance of religious fundamentalism, racism, belligerent nationalism, class resentment, vote rigging, and apocalyptic despair. These people are a minority, but remember that Hitler came to power with only 37% of the vote. America is like a giant bomb that we have to disarm, and tomorrow we have to make sure we cut the red wire and not the blue wire. But even then, the explosive charge will remain. I'm tempted to say this is the most important election you'll ever see, but I think there could be even more at stake in 2012.

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Related: McCain's Shameful Slur on Rashid Khalidi

Scenes from a blue oasis in a red state

Saw this in my neighborhood and had to take a picture of it. The context of this is that my neighborhood is stuffed with the sort of people right wing radio instructs you to hate: Earnest college students, college professors, liberal yuppies with jobs in marketing and law, bohemians who own successful antique shops. You know the like. It means that the overall tenor of the neighborhood, signage-wise, is “OBAMA! FUCK YEAH!” It’s not subtle in any way. I suspected, the second I saw this display, that the people responsible are trying to aggravate their neighbors. Considering that this house is in an area with heavy foot, car, and bicycle traffic and is right around the corner from the neighborhood hippie grocery store, I suspect mine is a good bet.

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A funny from the comment thread:

Mostly Harmless. Sincere and harmless. There are far worse displays than “no Obama”.

The signs are hand-made, not terribly threatening. It just looks like somebody cares, just not about the things we care about.

Did you ask them how they felt about the Socialest Bale Owt?

Secret Decoder Ring

Here it is ~ your very own secret decoder ring: something to help you decipher news and views pertaining to Islam and Muslims, a few things to keep in mind so that whenever you are reading or listening to something and these key words or key names pop up you can contemplate what the propagandists want you to believe and why in the light of what is really going on. You may want to add to them as you get further down the rabbit-hole and discover more and more of what lies beneath the surface. But be warned: decoding and deconstruction can rapidly go from a part-time hobby to a full-time job. Once you get started it's hard to stop. ~SuZ

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We Know Their Plans

Peter Chamberlain's analysis of events in Pakistan. - Ed.

Excerpt:

If we had a real news media in this country people like me wouldn’t have to speculate about the truth thousands of miles away in Pakistan, there would be honest reporters on the ground there.

Why do al Qaida and CIA fight the same enemies?

Why do both secret organizations, both sides in the same war, want to foment an Islamic democratic revolution in Pakistan and destroy the world order?

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The Federal Pie Chart

More information.

Reading matter for the days ahead

Last week, with desperate candidates bombarding the airwaves with caustic attacks on “spreading the wealth,” the top staffer of the closest thing America has to an inequality think tank came before Congress and delivered a rigorously thoughtful analysis of just how wide America’s great economic divide has become — and how we might start closing the gap.

This testimony from Robert Greenstein, the executive director of the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, went largely unnoticed outside the House Ways and Means hearing room. But the testimony, fortunately, lives online. If you’re looking for something sober to read after Election Day, something that will focus you on the core reality of our time that so needs changing, start here.

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The USS Liberty is NOT in the news again, or How the USS Liberty incident almost caused WW III

Please read the whole thing, even if you think you know what the Liberty Incident is all about and especially if you are not familiar with the topic. Thanks.

Thanks to the incomparable Phillip Weiss blog, I have found out that the USS Liberty is not in the news again.

Mr. Nader has pressed Mr. McCain in the liberty incident matter.

But how is the McCain name even associated with the Liberty Incident?

Lets go to the www.military.com/news article, Nader Presses McCain on Liberty Attack, October 31, 2008 off Knight Ridder.

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Chinese factories closing by the tens of thousands

via Cryptogon

This story uses the phrase, “Government statistics.” Not just any government’s statistics, but China’s government statistics! HA.

Anyway, here’s some of the follow-on effects of Joe and Jane Six Pack not being able to use their house as an ATM anymore.

Via: Los Angeles Times:

Financially troubled plants are being abandoned by the boss, leaving behind unpaid workers and debts.

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Evidence of sunspot involvement in climate change compelling

Over the last few years, the evidence that sunspots on our sun are directly related to climate change on earth has been steadily increasing.

I explained the exact proposed mechanism in some detail previously. Great work in this field is being carried out by Dr Henrik Svensmark and coworkers in Denmark and elsewhere.

Briefly, the mechanism is that cosmic rays impact on the earth from deep space. These cosmic rays penetrate our atmosphere and lead to the formation of cloud cover. The cosmic rays nucleate sites in the atmosphere, from which clouds form from the natural water vapour.

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Michael Moore's new film is online for free

Come watch the trailer for the new Michael Moore movie entitled "Slacker Uprising". You can download the entire movie for free by signing up at http://slackeruprising.com.

Joe, the Bummer

Like most Republican ‘Joe and pony’ shows the ‘stuff’ behind the icon is false. Joe is not a licensed plumber. He’s been proven a liar about most of his history, including his phony plumbing business. He hates socialism, but managed to take food stamps to feed his family once, during hard times. It’s hard to imagine the asshole would deny his parents social security in a scrape-by retirement:

“In the United States, the majority undertakes to supply a multitude of ready-made opinions for the use of individuals, who are thus relieved from the necessity of forming opinions of their own.” (Alexis de Tocqueville)

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The Grand Strategists Spill Their Guts

Video with Brzezinski, Kissinger and Scowcroft on Charlie Rose.

Video and transcript.

Profound, mind-staggering corruption details

I've been working through information at www.worldreports.org and came across this report published in May 2008. - Ed.

Excerpt:

UNPRECEDENTED BREACHES OF U.S. NATIONAL SECURITY DUE TO THE CORRUPTION
The penetration and breaches of US national security that we are about to expose here are so vast, unprecedented and pervasive, that to attribute them simplistically to the successful takeover of the Federal Government by the Chicago mafia would be insane.

The source of the file, obtained via the Editor’s intermediary, is Mr Robert Chapman, Founder, Editor and Publisher of The International Forecaster financial newsletter, which has a very good reputation. A former CIA counterintelligence officer (many years ago), Robert Chapman acquired expertise through personal experience as a broker and the former owner of a brokerage.

As a consequence of this intervention, the Editor may be obliged to tweak (but only very slightly) his ongoing, routine denunciation of the CIA as an unmitigated force for evil in the world, a stance that is, in turn, based upon the Editor’s experience and perception that ‘there is no such thing as a ‘White Hat’’. There is, however, such a thing as a former 'Grey Hat' that has been bleached White.

By way of introduction, Mr Chapman has just informed his subscribers as follows:

‘A former high-ranking member of the CIA, now retired, who was a career employee, contacted us this week. Due to our reporting on Halliburton and their corruption, we were given 46 pages of testimony on how Halliburton, the CIA, the Pentagon and Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have been stealing billions of dollars’ [sic: Trillions, surely: Ed.]. What we were presented with will shortly be presented to Congressman Waxman’s Oversight and Reform Committee in the House’.

‘These 46 pages of step-by-step criminal procedure [form] only part of a larger body of evidence being presented to Congress. What is presented is astonishing in the scope of the crimes and the billions of dollars stolen by these criminals'.

'The text is raw copy never seen by the public previously. This is a long read, but it reveals the depth of the official corruption within our Government. It is our desire that as many Americans as possible read this report. It is devastating. The writer worked under Porter Goss until August 2004. Vice President Cheney forced Tenet out of the Agency and later [forced] this writer [out as well]'.

'We have not edited any of the text. It would be presumptuous of us to do so. The writer was assigned the rank of a Two-Star General when lent to the Pentagon by the CIA’.

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Gazprom to start exploratory gas drilling in Venezuela

MEXICO CITY, November 2 (RIA Novosti) - A Russian floating platform will start to drill deep test wells on November 7 to prospect natural gas fields in the Gulf of Venezuela, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said on Sunday.

In 2005, Gazprom won a tender to prospect and develop natural gas blocks Urumaco 1 and Urumaco 2 in the Gulf of Venezuela as part of the Rafael Urdaneta project.

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Pictures by Brett Marty

Very interesting, especially if you live in a stepchild state (as I do) that politicians never campaign in. - Ed.

Visit website.

Gallup: Obama has highest favorability rating of any presidential candidate in 16 years

Possible interpretations: 1) the pollsters are lying and McCain is really much further ahead than we believe; 2) they pollsters are telling the truth so when the counters steal for McCain it will ensure massive unrest to trigger martial law; 3) the pollsters are goosing Obama's results up to ensure he gets in because the powers prefer him to McCain; 4) people just prefer Obama and have clued in enough that the powers can't easily steal this one, so the powers are leaving this be and planning something else. - Ed.

If the final USA Today/Gallup poll is any indication, Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) has achieved his widest lead in the presidential race to date.

In addition, Obama's favorable rating is 62 percent -- the highest of any presidential candidate tracked in Gallup's final pre-election polls dating back to 1992.

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McCain's big backfire: Majority of Americans like the idea of spreading the wealth

John McCain and Joe the Plumber are campaigning for Barack Obama, and they don't even know it. The more McCain has ramped up his attacks on Obama as a "spreader of wealth," the more the country has lined up behind the Democrat's plan to spread the wealth. If McCain's economic agenda was a gun and his attacks on Obama's agenda the bullets, the old soldier would have shot both his feet clean off a long time ago.

Watching the GOP's coordinated if increasingly delirious attacks on Obama's economic plan, it's clear that the party is even further out of touch with the America of 2008 than previously imagined. After eight years of establishing and then extending America's lead as the most unequal of all industrialized countries, Republicans thought they could deflect a national groundswell of righteous anger by dusting off and hurling every insult in the conservative arsenal, including old favorites "extremist," "radical," "Marxist" and "socialist." One suspects they are saving "anarchist" and "Hessian" for McCain's last-gasp speech on Monday.

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Slaves to the Orgy of Money

Investors on the outside slammed while insiders getting rich, Market conditions indicate you need to protect yourself with gold and silver, Paulson monetary voodoo reanimates zombie fraudster banks, Market crashes set the stage for bank acquisitions, predicting a financial super entity,

Down go consumer confidence and real estate values to all-time lows, but, nevertheless, up goes the Dow undaunted, claiming its second largest point gain ever as the counterintuitive insider trading beat goes on and on and on, ad nausea. Insiders get wealthy, and the non-insiders chasing them get annihilated. This has been the story on Wall Street for over a century. Do you think it was merely some sort of serendipitous coincidence that the dark pool of liquidity, known as Project Turquoise, was set to be activated near the end of August, just in time for all the Illuminist insiders to enjoy the profitable fireworks as volatility reached all-time highs, so that all of their nefarious trading could be done in unregulated secrecy? We can assure you that there are no coincidences on Wall Street. There is only rampant, rampaging insider trading and fiendish manipulation.

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Putin blasts US for financial crisis

MOSCOW (AFP) - Russian leaders blamed the US financial system's irresponsibility for the world economic crisis and said it should top the next American president's agenda, as Washington struggled to calm markets Wednesday.

"Whoever is elected president, the number one goal will be to shed light on the state of the (US) economy," Medvedev told reporters following talks with Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero in Strelna, near Saint Petersburg.

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Putin: We must end monopoly in world finance

The Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has called for a complete overhaul of the world’s financial system in order to guarantee stability and ensure progress. He was speaking in Astana in Kazakhstan, where the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is meeting to in discuss the global financial crisis.

The organisation, which comprises Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is widely seen as a counter-weight to NATO's influence in Eurasia. It is primarily concerned with security issues. This time, however, the sides are discussing how to develop social and economic cooperation.

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Israel spy chief fears Jewish extremist plot

That's funny. We have the same sorts of concerns here. - Ed.

JERUSALEM – The head of Israel's internal security service said Sunday he is "very concerned" that Jewish extremists could assassinate an Israeli leader in an attempt to foil peace moves with the Palestinians.

There has been a recent increase in violence by hardline Jewish settlers in the West Bank, and this week, Israel marks the 13th anniversary of the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin by an Israeli opponent of his negotiations.

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Still no medical records from Palin.

Sheesh. What's the rush already?!?! - Ed.

ABC News' Kate Snow reports: With three days left until the election, the John McCain campaign still has not, despite frequent requests, released any information about vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin's medical history, prompting some well-warranted skepticism.

Of course there are plenty of perfectly innocent explanations. The governor is perfectly healthy and the campaign feels no public pressure to release information? The doctor is on vacation and unreachable? The dog ate their records?

There are also more sinister explanations. But we won't go there.

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NASA - Magnetic portals connect sun and earth

Oct. 30, 2008: During the time it takes you to read this article, something will happen high overhead that until recently many scientists didn't believe in. A magnetic portal will open, linking Earth to the sun 93 million miles away. Tons of high-energy particles may flow through the opening before it closes again, around the time you reach the end of the page.

"It's called a flux transfer event or 'FTE,'" says space physicist David Sibeck of the Goddard Space Flight Center. "Ten years ago I was pretty sure they didn't exist, but now the evidence is incontrovertible."

Indeed, today Sibeck is telling an international assembly of space physicists at the 2008 Plasma Workshop in Huntsville, Alabama, that FTEs are not just common, but possibly twice as common as anyone had ever imagined.

Right: An artist's concept of Earth's magnetic field connecting to the sun's--a.k.a. a "flux transfer event"--with a spacecraft on hand to measure particles and fields. [Larger image]

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They Rule

via UrbanSurvival

An interface where you can plug in big names to see how they connect through corporate America, think tanks, etc. Some of the key banks seem to be missing, however... - Ed.

Visit site.

Triangle of Life - Earthquake Safety Information

Critical Earthquake Safety Information

Interesting perspective.

Please read this and pass it on -- it could save your life!!


* * * * EXTRACT FROM DOUG COPP'S ARTICLE ON THE "TRIANGLE OF LIFE", Edited by Larry Linn for MAA Safety Committee brief on 4/13/04.

My name is Doug Copp. I am the Rescue Chief and Disaster Manager of the American Rescue Team International (ARTI), the world's most experienced rescue team. The information in this article will save lives in an earthquake.

I have crawled inside 875 collapsed buildings, worked with rescue teams from 60 countries, founded rescue teams in several countries, and I am a member of many rescue teams from many countries. I was the United Nations expert in Disaster Mitigation (UNX051 -UNIENET) for two years. I have worked at every major disaster in the world since 1985, except for simultaneous disasters.

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Voice of the White House ?

Wherein support for a free internet = support for child pornography. OBVIOUSLY. - Ed.

“Even as the Bush righwingers are smelling defeat in the air, they are allying themselves with American law enforcement agencies in an attempt to completely censor and control the Internet usage and reception inside the United States.

Many people are aware that the American media is controlled; that negative news never get printed and governmental decrees are made public, tarted up as news stories but the internet has proven a mighty thorn in their side. Real material is on the internet and the fake government planted stories are torn to pieces so the Attorney General set up a special study group inside the Department of Justice to study internet usage and determine how it could be controlled.

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The US State Department will eat our brains

Touche! - Ed.

The U.S. government decided to extend its “war of ideas” to the popular Internet sites, forums, chat rooms and blogs in the Russian segment of the global network. This was announced by the Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs, James Glassman, and refers to the State Department’s Digital Outreach Team program. The program has already been tested on Arabs, Afghans, and Iranians. Under this program, specially trained people go to foreign Internet websites, and debunk myths about American politics as well as, “refer people back to factual documents.”

I often talk to fellow citizens on different forums and blogs about various topics, including the United States. We discuss different issues. For example, is the war in Iraq a sufficiently convincing illustration of the American peace-loving foreign policy, or should this image be reinforced with some sort of small victorious Pakistani campaign? Or this: why is the practice of promoting democracy limited to the planet Earth? I must say that during the debate, my conversation partners often reach conclusions that the U.S. State Department would find very unpleasant. The problem is certainly caused by the fact that none of the forum’s visitors have access to “factual documents.” It’s equally caused by the fact that there are no State Department employees among us. The best we’ve got are the “fifth column” and grantees that scrounge at the American Embassy.

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Iran warns of Israeli plots in the region

Iran's Foreign Minister urges regional states to remain vigilant about Israel's plots and interference in other countries' internal affairs.

"We witness (Israel's) interference in the Caucasus, Lebanon and Palestine which is aimed at mounting conflict and damaging interests and territorial integrity. Regional countries should remain vigilant to fight conspiracies,” Manouchehr Mottaki said in a meeting with his Turkish counterpart, Ali Babacan.

The meeting took place on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum regional meeting, which opened in Istanbul on October 30.

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Obama's Birth Wrap-up

It is one of my pet peeves how psyops emails close with DEMANDS and ACCUSATIONS to forward the email, and that if you don't follow their DEMANDS you are somehow UNPATRIOTIC or ASHAMED OF GOD or some such nonsense. It wouldn't surprise me if these psyops emails serve as some sort of tool to measure how obedient the sheeple are, by tracking their circulation via illegal surveillance operations of our email subject-matter lines. Furthermore, you can sometimes find curious things like this embedded in the emails, kind of like psyops-artist graffiti, I guess. I have a better idea: just DELETE them. - Ed.

Excerpt:

The hoaxers have claimed that this certificate is a fake, but have yet to produce any evidence to back that claim up. Their approach, straight out of the Napoleonic code, is to make continual accusations and demand that the accused prove their innocence. They hope that simply by repeating a claim often enough, useful idiots will come to believe it. But here in the United States, we follow the principle that the ACCUSER must prove the accused guilty, beyond a reasonable doubt. What that means is that when the Swift-Boaters accuse Barack Obama of fraud, it is they who are required to provide proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Otherwise, we as citizens are obligated to ignore such baseless accusations, and certainly refuse to forward them along to everyone in our mailing lists (as these spammed emails always insist we must do).

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Making America safe for the world

A specter is haunting the world, a specter of a dangerously growing gap between the United States presidential candidates' promises to make America safer on one hand, and an increasingly poorer, more unstable and more dangerous world on the other.

Six years after the Bush Doctrine of pre-emption made its debut, America's "war on terror" remains open-ended (now in three separate theaters of Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan). As the financial tsunami - made in the US - is leaving no nation behind, both America and the world are far less secure than before.

Meanwhile, America is losing influence both among its friends and foes.

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Coastal Maine tide change a mystery

BOOTHBAY HARBOR, Maine—Meteorologists are baffled by rapid tidal changes along the Maine coast, which damaged some boats and piers.

Witnesses say low tide turned and became high within a matter of minutes on Tuesday afternoon. The changes occurred six or seven times. The National Weather Service says reports from several locations indicated that water levels fell and rose from 4 feet to as much as 12 feet during the event.

In a public information statement, the weather service says the cause "remains a mystery and may never be known."

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KBR 3Q profit rose 35% as revenue climbs

Recession? No recession in the "Engineering and Construction" business (wink wink). - Ed.

Engineering and construction firm KBR Inc. said Friday its third-quarter profit increased 35 percent, led by strong revenue from a company it bought this spring.

Net income rose to $85 million, or 51 cents per share, in the three months ended Sept. 30. That compared with $63 million, or 37 cents, a year earlier.

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Oprah sees her own presidential vote dropped by touch screen voting machine

'I went back to check it, it had not recorded my presidential vote!', Says Terrified, Potentially Disenfranchised Queen of Television...

Well, now, finally we may be able to get rid of these damned things, now that it's actually happened to Oprah. Via Huff Po...

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"It will only get worse..."

A few years ago I wrote a post in which I said that Ann Coulter promotes hatred of "liberals" that is comparable to standard forms of ethnic and religious bigotry; that her violent tribalistic rhetoric acts as a sort of corrosive acid dissolving the bonds of democratic society. I'd like to take a moment to look at a case study of precisely the sort of bigotry I was talking about, a bigotry that we'll see indeed parallels standard prejudice.

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Still no medical records from Palin. What's the holdup?

ABC News Kate Snow reports: Governor Palin's campaign still has not released any information regarding her medical records despite frequent requests from the news media and the campaign's own assertion that they would release this information soon.

On Sunday morning, Palin spokeswoman Tracey Schmitt told ABC News that the campaign had planned to release information on her medical history early this week.

Today is Wednesday.

ABC News has asked every day this week about the status of the release of information and received no updates from the campaign. It is unclear what is holding things up.

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Speaking of Colorado...

Fireball passes over Colorado.

This fireball occurred at 7:29 PM MDT over central Colorado. I have received over 100 witness reports, from Casper, WY in the north, Albuquerque, NM is the south, the Western Slope to the west, and the Front Range to the east.

Data has been recovered from the following Network cameras:

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US Army document reveals plan to take 7m acres in SE Colorado

TRINIDAD, Colorado — The Pentagon has been planning since at least 2004 to acquire almost 7 million acres in southeastern Colorado, forcing more than 17,000 residents off their land to establish the largest military base in the world, according to documents obtained in a federal court case.

The unprecedented acquisition of 6.9 million acres, or 10,800 square miles, of private and public land would result in a military reservation larger than some states, including Massachusetts, New Hampshire and New Jersey. The multi-service battlefield would be more than triple the size of the enormous White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, which at 3,200 square miles is currently the largest military installation in the United States. It would undermine the whole southeastern corner of Colorado east of the Rockies destroying the last intact shortgrass prairie remaining in the American Great Plains.

via Pimpin Turtle

Blair has 'rolled over' to avoid arrest and jail

CONFRONTED WITH HIS COMPLICITY, BLAIR 'ROLLED OVER' AND EXPOSED THE OTHER RATS
London, 30th October 2008: It can now be revealed that former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, has 'shopped' the world-class financial criminals in order to avoid being arrested and sent to jail for the rest of his life. Fellow world-class criminal George W. Bush Jr. and his key White House staff were informed in the afternoon of 29th October that Blair had divulged EVERYTHING – identities of those involved and of bank accounts and coordinates – and that, accordingly, the present phase of the geocriminal gangland operation to hold the whole world to ransom has been DEFEATED.

Specifically, Blair, confronted with proof of his own involvement in these crimes, 'rolled over' on his comrades-in-crime and informed those tasked on the command of Her Majesty The Queen with procuring the Settlements releases and getting to the bottom of the global epidemic of gangland conspiracy to seize the assets of the whole world, that the following parties were engaged in these massive criminal operations:

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US foreign policy in need of reassessment

If you are keeping score of U.S. President George W. Bush's foreign military adventures, under "Somalia" you should probably chalk up another one for the Americans in the "loss" column. But the latest developments in Somalia are not only fascinating for what they tell us about the misconduct of American foreign policy in recent years.

Somalia seems to offer more intriguing evidence about how governments often must come to terms with militias, insurgent forces and other such informal armed groups in countries around the Arab-Asian region – and the roles these entities play where formal governments appear unable to deliver the basic requirements of statehood.

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China backs Iran SCO membership

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao says his country sees no obstacle to Iran's membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO).

"We believe that there is no problem with Iran's membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and we support the idea," Wen Jiabao said during a meeting with Iran's First Vice President Parviz Davoudi on Thursday, IRNA reported.

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Rice to Israel after elections

Hmm. Whatever for? - Ed.

Jerusalem - Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice intends to arrive in Israel immediately after next Tuesday's elections.
U.S. State Department officials have held talks with Israeli representatives in an attempt to set a date for her visit.

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They made a killing: The use of knowledge of coverts ops in the stock market

Via Cryptogon, who reports a Homeland Security ping after posting this. - Ed.

Let’s first take a quick look at, Insider Crimes, Funny Money and Options Rackets:

I had always assumed the entire business of the markets to be a massive criminal enterprise that allowed public participation simply because it made a few people extremely wealthy. But, I wondered, when do the fewest people make the most money in the shortest period of time?

During gaps.

A gap is a sudden, violent change in the price of a stock, future, bond, etc. Gaps are caused by some event that temporarily creates a state of disequilibrium in order flows. Gaps on stocks started to draw my attention because I just knew that insiders (and others) were pre-positioning themselves to profit from those moves.

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Senate Projections 10/31

Note in particular the North Carolina races. You can really get a feel for the unhinged quality. - Ed.

Excerpt:

The first of these is in North Carolina, which continues to lean toward Demcoratic challenger Kay Hagan, but where we are waiting to gauge the reaction to Elizabeth Dole's controversial new ad which implies that Hagan, an elder at the First Presbyterian Church, is an athiest. The ad has drawn a harsh reaction from the local media and a Rasmussen poll conducted on Wednesday night, just as the controversy was starting to brew, had Hagan moving into a 6-point lead. But, the Carolinas have a long tradition of last-minute attack advertising, and the only reason it has that tradition is because sometimes such things work. Dole's ad is callous enough that it seems likely to be one of the exceptions, but this remains a race to watch.

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Look Out! Possible Obama Landslide

John McCain desperately wants to frame the final days of this presidential campaign as yet another comeback story, and pundits and pollsters keep wondering if the race is tightening. What’s actually happening is that the prospects for a Democratic landslide are growing.

Look where the candidates are. In the closing days of the 2000 and 2004 campaigns, all the action was in Florida and Ohio. Now it’s in states that George W. Bush carried comfortably, such as North Carolina: Barack Obama was in Raleigh this morning, John McCain was in Fayetteville yesterday, Joe Biden was in Greensboro and Greenville on Monday, and Sarah Palin was in Asheville on Sunday. Or Virginia: Obama held two events there yesterday, while Palin did three on Monday. This is no coincidence. Obama has taken criticism for plowing resources into his attempt to redraw the electoral map. But the epicenter of this campaign has shifted to precisely the states where Obama wanted to expand the Democratic electorate, and McCain hasn’t been able to push it back.

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The 'dirty little secret' of the US bank bailout

In an unusually frank article published in Saturday's New York Times, the newspaper's economic columnist, Joe Nocera, reveals what he calls "the dirty little secret of the banking industry"--namely, that "it has no intention of using the [government bailout] money to make new loans."

As Nocera explains, the plan announced October 13 by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson to hand over $250 billion in taxpayer money to the biggest banks, in exchange for non-voting stock, was never really intended to get them to resume lending to businesses and consumers--the ostensible purpose of the bailout. Its essential aim was to engineer a rapid consolidation of the American banking system by subsidizing a wave of takeovers of smaller financial firms by the most powerful banks.

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The Ugly America

“You really do hate America!” This was the parting shot from a man I had just debated on a television show shortly before the invasion of Iraq. Because he’s a notorious right-wing blowhard, I laughed it off as the raving of a crackpot in extremis.

Little did I know. …

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Nanotechnology - the new threat to food

Following on from genetic engineering, nanotechnology represents the latest high technology attempt to infiltrate our food supply. Senior scientists have warned that nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, introduces serious new risks to human and environmental health. Yet in the absence of public debate, or oversight from regulators, unlabelled foods manufactured using nanotechnology have begun to appear on our supermarket shelves.

Around the world there is an increase in interest in our food, health and environment. Where are products produced, how, why, by whom, how far have they travelled, how long have they been stored etc. The organic and local food movements have emerged as an intuitive and practical response to the increasing use of chemicals in food production, and to the growing alienation of industrial agribusiness from holistic agricultural systems. People have chosen to eat organic foods because they care about the health of their families and the health of the environment. Organic agriculture also enables people to support integrated, environmentally friendly agriculture, and appropriate technology, rather than chemical-intensive factory farming.

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Shepherd Huts

Visit website

h/t Lord Stirling

The Most Radical Thing You Can Do

Staying home as a necessity and a right.

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The Triumph of Ignorance: Why morons succeed in US politics

How was it allowed to happen? How did politics in the US come to be dominated by people who make a virtue out of ignorance? Was it charity that has permitted mankind’s closest living relative to spend two terms as president? How did Sarah Palin, Dan Quayle and other such gibbering numbskulls get to where they are? How could Republican rallies in 2008 be drowned out by screaming ignoramuses insisting that Barack Obama is a Muslim and a terrorist?(1)

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Analysts question timing of Syria raid

A cross-border raid into Syria by U.S. forces in Iraq and subsequent stonewalling by U.S. officials unwilling to divulge details have led to rampant speculation among U.S. analysts about the origins and meaning of the attack.

"So the question is: Why?" wrote geo-strategic analyst and journalist Helena Cobban on her blog, wondering if the raid could have been pulled off without explicit permission from the highest levels of the President George W. Bush administration.

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Syria's fury is justified - Who can blame Damascus for getting cozy with Moscow?

The US has once again “targeted foreign fighters” as part of its so-called war on terror. But these “fighters” were all Syrian civilians, including four youngsters. Another five individuals have been hospitalized after being shot by US Special Forces.

Washington has admitted perpetrating this tragic incident but insists the victims were terrorists just as it does when its fighter jets illegally cross the Afghanistan-Pakistan border and end up wiping out entire families. Syria describes the adult victims as construction workers.

Even the pro-American Afghan leader Hamid Karzai is fed up with the Pentagon’s trigger-happy policies that exact such a terrible toll on innocent civilian life. The problem is there is no international oversight on US military activities. There is no investigation into these murders and the world is expected to take every utterance from the US military as gospel.

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Next week the Boomers go bust

Either way next week, the US presidential election is the kiss of death to the short, unhappy rise to power of the baby-boomer generation. If Republican John McCain defies the polls and wins, it will be a repudiation of 16 years of Boomer rule. At 72, McCain's is the generation the Boomers disrespected.

But if Barack Obama wins, he will be the generational switch that consigns the Boomers to history, with the median age of the American voter at 45.

He is at the vanguard of the Brady Bunch generation - the Obama Bunch. His wife, Michelle (born 1964), can pick every episode of the seminal 1970s family sitcom just from the opening seconds.

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Iran seeks banking ties with SCO

Iran has proposed the Shanghai Cooperation Organization to include Tehran as a member of the SCO Banking Consortium to lower trade costs.

“Iran's presence in the members' banking consortium can reduce the costs of economic ties and increase the volume of trade,” Iran's First Vice President Parviz Davoudi said as he delivered a speech at the seventh meeting of SCO Prime Ministers in the Kazakh capital, Astana.

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Goldman Sachs ready to hand out bonuses

Goldman Sachs is on course to pay its top City bankers multimillion-pound bonuses - despite asking the U.S. government for an emergency bail-out.

The struggling Wall Street bank has set aside £7billion for salaries and 2008 year-end bonuses, it emerged yesterday.

Each of the firm's 443 partners is on course to pocket an average Christmas bonus of more than £3million.

The size of the pay pool comfortably dwarfs the £6.1billion lifeline which the U.S. government is throwing to Goldman as part of its £430billion bail-out.

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A question for AIG: Where did the cash go?

The American International Group is rapidly running through $123 billion in emergency lending provided by the Federal Reserve, raising questions about how a company claiming to be solvent in September could have developed such a big hole by October. Some analysts say at least part of the shortfall must have been there all along, hidden by irregular accounting.

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Mandelson hails 'thaw' in Russia ties

C. Story on Mandelson: Peter Mandelson is an extremely dangerous commodity, so Gordon Brown must have had some overriding reason for suddenly yanking this discredited creature back from Brussels, kicking him into the Lords, and plonking him inside his Cabinet. The overriding reason will doubtless emerge as oligarchs implode, unspeakable activities are exposed, and financial empires built on stolen assets and risky credit collapse. - Ed.

The British business secretary has hailed a 'thawing' of relations between Russia and the UK as he ended his four-day visit to Moscow.

"I hope my visit will intensify a thawing of the difficult political relationship that we have experienced," Peter Mandelson told reporters at the British embassy.

Mandelson's visit to Russia was the first by an incumbent British cabinet minister since early 2007.

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Mind Control: The Ultimate Terror; Operation Monarch

The US department of Defense’s original plans to research the Mind control phenomena was to determine psychological and chemical formulas providing the US with the “perfect” espionage agent. This quickly evolved into planning the “production” of the perfect soldier… government worker…slave.

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The citizen's guide to refusing DC Metro searches

Metro Transit police have announced that they will soon will begin conducting random searches of passengers' bags and packages.

Flex Your Rights disputes the notion that citizens must prove their innocence in order to use public transit. Moreover, we have serious concerns that this territorial expansion of police search powers is doing grave damage to people's understanding of their Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches and seizures.

As innocent citizens become increasingly accustomed to being searched by the police, politicians and police agencies are empowered to further expand the number of places where all are considered guilty until proven innocent.

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Les Vis: Love in the Devic Realm

Life means something different for a variety of classes of people. According to a particular ancient tradition there are seven rays, or soul paths that proceed out of the white light of spirit and find their way back again to the source which would mean, I think, that life is just a journey of discovery, or, possibly, nothing more than a process of remembrance.

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Copper door handles and taps kill 95% of superbugs in hospitals

Making door handles, taps and light switches from copper could help the country beat superbugs, scientists say.

A study found that copper fittings rapidly killed bugs on hospital wards, succeeding where other infection control measures failed.

In the trial at Selly Oak hospital, in Birmingham, copper taps, toilet seats and push plates on doors all but eliminated common bugs.

It is thought the metal 'suffocates' germs, preventing them breathing. It may also stop them from feeding and destroy their DNA.

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I Got Mine, Screw You

. . . seems to have replaced E Pluribus Unum as the national motto for many people on the right.

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related:
Greenspan's Body Count

More silliness....

Zoriah: Children shot dead in West Bank village

After arriving in Israel I began to hear rumors about two young boys who had been shot to death in the West Bank village of Ni'ilin. I traveled to the village with a translator to meet their families.

It is always difficult to photograph people who have just suffered a terrible loss, but you have to believe in your ability to document their struggle and then present it to the world. You also have to believe in the world's ability to recognize injustice and hopefully move toward change. If nothing ever comes from my work, and from these people's pain, then the situation feels truly hopeless.

In the end, you never feel like you are able to capture the weight and severity of what happened. No matter how hard you try it seems impossible to portray what has happened in a photograph. But you continue to try because it is better to try than to do nothing.

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The Fringe for Obama

Excerpt:

I think the problem with American fringe voters is not that they don't identify enough with the system, but that they identify too much with it. Think of it this way: Your city has seceded from America. It's a tense situation, with federal militarized police surrounding you on all sides. And somehow, maybe through a friend in the next state, you get a vote. Now does it bother you less to vote for someone you have deep disagreements with? American greens, ask German greens who you should vote for. American anarchists, ask Spanish anarchists. If foreign policy is important to you, ask people in Baghdad or Caracas or Tehran. I think they'll say, "Are you daft? Do you want us all to burn? Vote for Obama!" Why does a vote for the American president have to be deep statement of your personal values? It's not a fucking tattoo.

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The man who knows too much

Excerpt:

A Democrat who truly despises the Bush regime, he is reluctant to make predictions about exactly what is going to happen in the forthcoming election on the grounds that he might 'jinx it'. The unknown quantity of voter racism apart, however, he is hopeful that Obama will pull it off, and if he does, for Hersh this will be a starting gun. 'You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on 20 January [the date of the next president's inauguration],' he says, with relish. '[They say:] "You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then." So that is what I'll do, so long as nothing awful happens before the inauguration.'

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These are truly special times

It is not often that one can say; “we are living in truly historic times”. I believe these are very critical and special days. I never thought I would ever see Euros being accepted in stores on 5th Avenue, or my country conducting torture on innocent people in secret jails.

I never thought I would live to see the United States bombing innocent people in Iraq and Afghanistan on a pretense for fighting a fictitious “War on Terror”. I never thought I would experience the apparent beginning of the unraveling of the American financial power. Yes, these are truly historic moments.

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National Biolab built in Galveston TX

Again from the 'What could possibly go wrong?' department. Just wait for the goosed up HAARP hurricane with unprecedented winds to tear the roof off the building. Of course, they will 'regret' putting the building on a barrier island then, when it's too late. - Ed.

GALVESTON, Tex. — Much of the University of Texas medical school on this island suffered flood damage during Hurricane Ike, except for one gleaming new building, a national biological defense laboratory that will soon house some of the most deadly diseases in the world.

How a laboratory where scientists plan to study viruses like Ebola and Marburg ended up on a barrier island where hurricanes regularly wreak havoc puzzles some environmentalists and community leaders.

“It’s crazy, in my mind,” said Jim Blackburn, an environmental lawyer in Houston. “I just find an amazing willingness among the people on the Texas coast to accept risks that a lot of people in the country would not accept.”

Officials at the laboratory and at the National Institutes of Health, which along with the university is helping to pay for the $174 million building, say it can withstand any storm the Atlantic hurls at it.

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That's not what we intended

Revisionist history from the people who brought us 9/11 and every miserable thing that followed from it. Neocon lies from beginning to end. Don't puke on your keyboard. - Ed.

From Paul Wolfowitz to Richard Perle: How the American architects of the Iraq war explain their failure.


The memo is known as the “horror show” in Pentagon circles. America alienated the world and had to go it practically alone in Iraq. Sure, Saddam is history, but civil war, manipulated by Syria and Iran, goes on. Washington is helplessly tied down and is forced to ignore important subjects like the Middle-East peace process. Democratization and reconstruction drag endlessly on.

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"Georgian soldiers were doped to kill civilians"

I guess they didn't have time to brainwash them. - Ed.

Many of the Georgian soldiers who took part in the attack on South Ossetia in August were drugged before going into combat, according to a Moscow-based human rights group. On Monday in New York the Moscow Bureau for Human Rights (MBHR) presented a book of photos and testimonies from the war.

MBHR Director Aleksandr Brod said Ossetian witnesses reported many of the captured Georgians had numerous injection markings on their arms.

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Reactions to US strike in Syria

Reactions to this incident are interesting and one would hope that there would be even more condemnation of it than there has been to contradict the weak justifications used by the US. One would also hope that nations would speak out officially against this same thing being done in violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty. Has anyone? If so, I missed it.

US Faces International Condemnation in Wake of Syria Strike lists the Syrian government, the Lebanese government and the Arab League as condemning the attack as a violation of Syrian sovereignty, while Russia cautioned against such attacks and remarked that this would have a “sharply negative effect” on the region.

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True Vote summarizes the problems in US elections thus far

"Unacceptable long lines, machine problems, registration and voter challenges and deception of voters"

True Vote Press Release

The election integrity organization True Vote released a summary of the election-related problems that have been seen thus far in the 2008 election. True Vote keeps a daily summary of election activity on its website www.TrueVote.US.org.

Kevin Zeese, the executive director of the organization summarized what has occurred so far saying "Early voting has been like watching an election in a slow meltdown. The U.S. has been seeing long lines in early voting with people waiting hours to vote. Electronic voting machines including touch screens and optical scans have shown consistent problems, the most dramatic being the switching of votes reported in West Virginia, Texas and Tennessee. There has been an ongoing battle on voter registration with Republicans attacking ACORN’s mass registration effort as well as challenging millions of newly registered voters in litigation. Republicans have uniformly lost their challenges to newly registered voters in court but are likely to be challenging voters on Election Day. There have been reports of voter deception – fliers telling people the wrong date, precinct workers telling voters the wrong way to vote and telephone canvassers providing misleading information. There have also been reports of absentee ballots picked up ‘volunteers’ never being delivered to the board of elections."Zeese went on to warn: "If on Election Day we see the problems we’ve seen thus far it is going to be a long and messy day. The U.S. is showing it has a long way to go before it can claim to be the greatest democracy on Earth. What we are seeing should be unacceptable in a 'great' democracy."

Approximately one-third of voters are voting early, here is a sample of what is occurring:

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The "wisdom" of 'Joe the Plumber'

The all-out effort from John McCain's presidential campaign to scare voters into backing the Republican candidate continued apace on Tuesday as McCain surrogate Joe the Plumber agreed that a Barack Obama presidency would mean the "death of Israel" and end democracy in America.

The Ohio plumber, who has no license and is actually named Samuel Wurzelbacher, spoke at a McCain campaign event in Columbus Monday. A McCain supporter asked if "a vote for Obama is a vote for the death of Israel." JTP hardly batted an eye.

"I'll go ahead and agree with you on that," Wurzelbacher said.

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Now I'm Pissed

They say there are five stages of grief; Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression and Acceptance.

I'm over the denial stage. At first I couldn't believe that this country could have gone the way it has. Loss of rights, loss of jobs, willful destruction of the economy to benefit the few, people losing their homes and life savings and turned out on the streets to survive, the list goes on.

I've moved on to anger. I'm angry that our elected representatives have forgotten that they are supposed to represent us. We were lied into an illegal war where (at least) 4000 of our best and brightest lost their lives and the ones that survive will never be the same. I'm angry that basic rights such as habeus corpus and posse comitatus have been thrown out the window and torture is an accepted practice.

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Spreading the Wealth: The politics of class warfare

John McCain said in the last debate, “The whole premise behind Sen. Obama’s plans are class warfare – let’s spread the wealth around.”


Unfortunately not only does he share George Bush’s economic philosophy, he even shares Bush’s tortured syntax. What McCain and the whole right wing leadership refuse to acknowledge are the facts pointed out by Warren Buffett, one of the richest men in the world. “There’s class warfare, all right, but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning.”

Democracy is a philosophy of government, one in which the will of the majority is meant to determine policy. By its nature it is meant to serve the common good. Capitalism and socialism are economic systems, neither of which is specified by the constitution. The right has continually tried to equate democracy with capitalism – an assertion both historically and, by definition, inaccurate. Whenever this is pointed out, the right hollers “class war” and “socialism,” categorizing people who suffer from the right’s excesses as malcontents and wild-eyed radicals whose ideas are not worthy of discussion.

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Greenspan is the Man

More silliness for you. - Ed.

Alan Greenspan threw the apple at Isaac Newton.
If you had a cent for every time Alan Greenspan made a mistake, you'd owe him money.
Alan Greenspan can't watch CSI. There's no such thing as mystery to him.
Alan Greenspan last had a sick day 76 years ago. BAM.....Great Depression.

And so on...

Pepsi's new logo a bargain at several hundred million dollars

This economic downturn has, surprisingly, not killed the "branding" industry, which exists for the sole purpose of allowing graphic design majors to soak clueless corporate behemoths out of millions of dollars for what amounts to a few tweaks of a computer design template. We salute you, brand consultants! You are the hustlers of a new generation. Pictured is the inanimate, non-dynamic, old Pepsi logo; and after the jump, the "more dynamic and more alive" new logo that Pepsi just rolled out at a cost that will eventually total hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide:

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Health benefits of common foods

Good to know kind of stuff...

h/t to Lord Stirling.

See Chart

Are these things connected?

Staph germs harder than ever to treat, studies say

WASHINGTON - Drug-resistant staph bacteria picked up in ordinary community settings are increasingly acquiring "superbug" powers and causing far more serious illnesses than they have in the past, doctors reported Monday. These widespread germs used to be easier to treat than the dangerous forms of staph found in hospitals and nursing homes.

"Until recently we rarely thought of it as a problem among healthy people in the community," said Dr. Rachel Gorwitz of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

keep reading...

What causes drug-resistant bacteria?

I believe that the real cause of antibiotic resistant bacteria is far more prosaic than anyone has suspected. Before Doctors and Nurses give people injections they are quite properly taught to point the needle up, tap the syringe to force air bubbles to the top of the syringe, then squirt enough of the fluid out of the syringe to insure that the air is cleared from the device and the needle. This is utterly necessary to prevent the injection of air into the patient's blood system where it could cause a fatal embolism.

The antibiotic squirted out of the needle simply falls to the floor and creates a splatter. This splatter kills bacteria on the floor where it is intense enough to do so, but around the edges of the splatter surviving bacteria can breed resistant strains to every type of injectable antibiotic being used in the hospital.

When antibiotic splatter is combined with the modern janitorial practice of a one step floor cleaner, the floor becomes a giant Petri dish for the breeding of drug resistant bacteria. One step floor 'cleaners' can't possibly clean floors; they make the floor look clean and shiny, but since many of them are made of glycerin compounds they simply serve as a growth medium for the Petri dish.

keep reading...

Les Vis: Prophetic as usual

Click through that link... - Ed.

Excerpt:

It’s all part of a plan but the full scope of that plan is not apparent to most people. Meanwhile something unexpected has been happening. I won’t go into what that is because it enters into the realm of metaphysics; an area as real as physics but not as readily available to the senses. One could learn a great deal by studying the nature of bandwidths, waves/rays… radio waves, x-rays, gamma rays. Once could learn a great deal looking into something like that. I’m going to give you a link as an example of things that may or may not be going on behind the scenes. I also want to point out that the attack on Syria is much more monumental than the people standing around the Three Card Monte table may imagine.

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The end of supreme authority

Beware of whoever becomes the next 'Supreme Authority'. - Ed.

His 18-year term as chairman of the US Federal Reserve was already under scrutiny because of the crisis rocking the international economy. But Alan Greenspan’s admission last Thursday that his resistance to greater regulation of the credit industry had been a mistake, and that he was “shocked” by developments, was heavy in symbolism: The man who was considered responsible for the flourishing economy of the past two decades, the key player in the world’s largest economy, admitted that he did not know as much as we thought he did. Testifying before the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform, Greenspan, whose term ended in 2006, confessed that his ideology (of a free market needing no external restraint) may have mislead him. “That’s precisely the reason I was shocked, because I’d been going for 40 years or so with considerable evidence that it was working exceptionally well,” he said. “I made a mistake in presuming that the self-interest of organizations, specifically banks, is such that they were best capable of protecting shareholders and equity in the firms… I discovered a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works.” This raises the question: If Greenspan did not know how the world works, who knows where we are headed now?

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H5N1 DNA in flu vaccine

Four in court after terror raids

Thought criminals? - Ed.

Four men are due in court charged with terror offences following a series of raids in Birmingham, police said.

Three of the men were charged with engaging in conduct with the intention of assisting in the commission of acts of terrorism under the Terrorism Act 2006, West Midlands Police said.

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Syria warns US: An eye for an eye

Syria has warned the United States of retaliatory measures if Washington launches another incursion into the country's territories.

"We would defend our territories" if the US repeats such a "criminal and terrorist aggression" against Syria, Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem said on Monday, a day after US commandoes launched a cross-border attack on a small Syrian border town.

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This is your Democracy

Ashley Todd, PA Racist Hoax "Victim", was paid organizer for College RNC, not a volunteer

Last week, a troubled young woman handed the McCain campaign a Willie Horton-style race card, and the media helped them play it.

The attack of a 20-year-old college student was seized upon by the Drudge Report as a "mutilation," and other conservative Web sites as fodder against the surging Obama campaign. Ashley Todd filed a report with the Pittsburgh Police Department alleging a 6'4'' black man robbed her, then carved up her cheek and sexually assaulted her because he saw that she was a McCain supporter. It turns out the story was made up, and that Todd's black eye and the backwards B scratched into her cheek were most likely self-inflicted.

Something was missed in the reporting of the story, however. Though Todd was an employee of the College Republican National Committee (CRNC) -- as confirmed today to BuzzFlash by a representative there named Ethan Eioln -- nearly every report demoted her to the role of volunteer. In fact, she was hired by the CRNC and promised a contract wage of $3,600 from August until Election Day. After she was charged by police for filing a false report, her employment with the CRNC was terminated.

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The Death of a Red State

Excerpt:

If you're skeptical about the extent to which it always comes back to race, just listen to the arguments that conservatives are making about the causes of the financial crisis. Turn on any conservative radio station today and you can hear somebody blaming the entire crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, which forced banks to make credit available in low-income neighborhoods. Through this bit of rhetorical gymnastics, conservatives have now pinned one of the most outrageous cases of fiscal irresponsibility in the history of rich white people on what Rush Limbaugh calls the "approved Democrat constituent." They're saying that the entire financial system has gone Krakatoa because poor black people didn't make their payments.

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How Mossad controls our political parties

Politicians in the United States and Britain are made to pass under the yoke of the Zionist masters who control our leading political parties. By forcing our political leaders to accept the Zionist yoke our nations become subjugated and the pro-Israel agenda is forced upon the entire population. Zionist control of Britain's prime ministers Tony Blair and Gordon Brown is explained in this article, "How Mossad Controls our Political Parties."

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Israelis like McCain over Obama

Israelis would elect John McCain over Barack Obama for president of the United States, a poll found.

The poll found that 46.4 percent of Israelis would vote for McCain, the Republican candidate, and 34 percent for his Democratic opponent, with 18.6 undecided, Ynet reported Monday. The survey, conducted by the TNS Teleseker polling agency on behalf of the Rabin Center for Israel Studies, interviewed 500 Israelis aged 18 to 65.

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Worst Case Scenario for the World: McCain in US, Netanyahu in Israel

The world is hoping and even praying that nothing happens that will upset an Obama win in the upcoming US election. Yet today McCain is either indulging in some serious wishful thinking or he knows something that we don’t. According to some reports, he has told the world that, despite the polls telling us otherwise, he ‘guarantees a win in next week’s election’. He concedes that it’ll be close but, nonetheless, he thinks he’s going to get the job.

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Only in America

When the Rich Fleece the Middle Class and Poor this is Capitalism. When the Rich are called on to Pay their Share of Taxes, it is Socialism!

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Rossiyskaya Gazette: GWB Called to Order

Europe called George W. Bush to order, that is, the new global financial order. Creating this order will require several summits, the first of which will take place in the U.S. before the end of November.

For now, it’s not clear exactly when the heads of the world’s leading economies will meet, where the meeting will take place, or who will be invited. But even the little information that’s already available is enough for experts and politicians to assert that the world has approached an important line, and crossing that line will lead to global changes. And it’s obvious that this statement refers not only to the qualitative modernization of the economic model, but also serious political shifts as well.

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Voting a Straight Ticket - problems confirmed on Snopes

To All Addressed:

I am a "big time" Democrat and an informed voter who recently volunteered for Barack Obama in New Mexico this past week. As an informed voter, I questioned the message sent below and decided to verify what I already know.

If you punch Barack Obama for president and then punch Straight Ticket you will NEGATE your vote. Again, you will negate your vote. If you do not believe me, please call the Harris County Democratic Party office at 713-802-0085.

Tell all your friends to vote either STRAIGHT TICKET or PUNCH EACH DEMOCRAT individually. Do not double vote, it negates your ballot and it will be thrown out.

Be informed!!!!!

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